BIBLE CRITICISM.

Southland Times, Issue 20220, 4 July 1927, Page 11

BIBLE CRITICISM.

To the Editor. Sir, —Your correspondent, Mr Joseph King, of Timaru, is like some of your correspondents of Southland, a sincere believer of the Bible as it stands. He has no faith in University Professors of Theology being honest and able to criticise what to your correspondents is a Holy Book. Let us for a moment consider a young man studying theology at a University. He will find there young men like himself studying all the various sciences known to the world—astronomy, geology, biology, ' anthropology and many others. How could ' such a young man l mention to all these | that neither this earth nor anything exist- ; ed exactly 5932 years ago, that one year ! after the spirit of God, W r ho moved about the deep from eternity before He took a motive to create something and so created the earth out of nothing. On the second day He contrived to make a firmament in the midst of the waters and divided the waters from the waters, one lot below and the other above this firmament and called the upper part Heaven, where He proposed to dwell. (Gen. 1: 8). It was on this firmai ment where the sons of God lived so we ! read “And the sons of God saw that the i daughters of men were fair. There were ' giants in the earth in those days and also after that when the sons of God come in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them.” (Gen. VI). According to , Genesis, the earth was the first thing creat- ■ ed, before sun, moon or stars, the earth was the greatest and most important part l of Creation. Then God said: Let the earth bring forth grass and herb, yielding seed and the fruit tree yielding fruit and it was so. And the earth brought forth grass in seed and fruit trees loaded with fruit. This j was on the third day. Let anyone fancy I the dry land teeming with vegetables, i flowers in full bloom, trees loaded with fruit | all in the darkness and cold, not a ray of ! sunshine or warmth upon the earth. On the fourth day God made the sun so that the sons of man could see the fruit on the trees. He also made the moon, and the stars also, He almost forgot them, they were so small and insignificant. Then take the story in II Kings XIII: “And it came to pass, as they still went on, and talked, that, behold, there appeared a chariot of fire, and horses of fire, and parted them both asunder, and Elijah went up by a whirlwind into Heaven.” Or the story of Balaam and his ass, and the “Lord opened the mouth of the ass and the ass could speak and said unto Balaam, What have I done unto thee that thou hast smitten me three times?” (Num. XXII: 2-8). Endless references of this sort could be made to any part of the Old and New Testament. How will a young theologican fare with this sort of story and assert it as true to other students? The stories in the New Testament are no better apart from its miracles. Take the story of the birth of Jesus as reported in Matth. (I: II). When the Lord told Joseph to flee with Mary and the infant Jesus to Egypt from the intentions of King Herod, and they stayed in Egypt till Herod died. Not a word of this story is told in either Mark or John. Luke completely nullifies the story of Matthew, for in Luke nothing whatever happened as reported in Matthew. In this instance, when the angel of the Lord announced to Mary about her going to be with child by the Holy Ghost, she merely went to her sister Elizabeth who was the wife of Zacharias, but an old woman who never had any children although they both always wished for sons. But the Holy Ghost favoured her too and she was six months in that state when Mary her sister arrived and told Elizabeth her condition when the babe in Elizabeth’s womb leaped for joy. (Luke I: 41). Mary stayed there three months, when she went home again to Nazareth. Shortly after Joseph and Mary journeyed to Jerusalem and on the journey, in Bethlehem Jesus was born. Nobody molested them, nobody pursued them, they could go anywhere they liked and do what, they liked. All this happened at the same time and period that Matthew stated they had to flee to Egypt. How would such contradictory evidence stand in a court of law? Such contradictions in the Bible are innumerable. Let us consider the following: How is it possible to accept that one grew up from infancy to a man of almost thirty years old in a small community as the little hamlet of Nazareth, with possibly not more than from 150 to 200 people of a population, where everybody knew everybody and among brothers and sisters, with neither they nor the people of the village suspecting or knowing in any way that a member of any family was much different from others. Possibly his own mother did not believe in him when Jesus started his mission as the expected Messiah. They all said: “Is not this the carpenter’s son ? Is not His Mother called Mary? And his brethem, James, and Joses, and Simon, and Judas? And His sisters, are they not all with us? Whence then hath this man all these things.” (Matth. XIII: 55). And they were offended at Him, but Jesus said unto them, “A Prophet is not without honour, save in his own country and in his own ; house. And he did not many mighty works ■ there because of their unbelief.” (Matth. | XIII: 58) Jesus said He could not be i believed among his own kin. (Mark VI: 4). Can we not see by the above that the words